Saturday, 28 April 2012

RIM is holding a BlackBerry Jam conference next month in Orlando where it is supposed to give out development devices running the upcoming BlackBerry 10 to ten of the developers attending the event. We are now seeing what are allegedly pictures of this developer device, courtesy of a CrackBerry forum member.

As you may recall, ZTE made some bold statements earlier this week, most notably involving ambitions to start shipping some 100 million smartphones annually by 2015. This goal now seems slightly less realistic, after they fell short of their forecast results for the first quarter of the year.

It's time for today's "photo of the Samsung Galaxy S3" leak - these seem to occur more and more often as we come closer to May 3, when Samsung's Unpacked event will finally settle things one and for all.

Note: the middle and right photos come from previous leaks.

The newly leaked photo is the one on the left

The leaked photo in question (the one on the left) shows a device with a hardware home button with two capacitive keys on its sides (menu and back).

Photos and specifications of an yet unannounced Sony smartphone just surfaced. The guys fromTechblog.gr got some live photos and specs of the ICS-running Sony ST21i and they were kind enough to share them with us.

Sony ST21i live photos

Sony ST21i reportedly rocks Android 4.0.3 ICS and is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset with a single-core Snapdragon CPU clocked at 800 MHz and an Adreno 200 GPU - just like the one found in the Xperia X10 mini, X8, Galaxy Ace and others.

Samsung announced its financial results for the first quarter of this year and the South Korean company is cheering. Analysts like Strategy Analytics say that it is now king of the mobile phone hill - ending Nokia's 14-year reign.

Samsung shipped 93.5 million phones in the three month period, while the former champ Nokia managed just 82.7 million. Of the shipped Samsung phones, 44.5 million were smartphones, which beats Apple's achievement of 35.1 million smartphones.

Friday, 27 April 2012

Sony had announced earlier this year that we can expect an international version of the Sony Xperia ionto come out in the summer. In a press conference in Taiwan, the company unveiled just that - the Sony Xperia ion LT28i (the AT&T version, which was exclusive until recently, is dubbed LT28at).

Motorola recently announced that the GSM version of the RAZR MAXX will be launched in Germany this May. Now in their latest announcement, Motorola said that it will also be bringing the phone to the UK by mid-May.

The phone is identical to the one sold in the US on Verizon's network, except instead of CDMA it will be running on the GSM network. Curiously, it is known by the same model name, XT910, as the standard GSM Motorola RAZR.

LG has announced its financial report for the Q1 of 2012 and things are looking good for the Korean tech giant.

The company reported consolidated sales of $10.78 billion, which is 7.1% and 11.5% lower compared to the previous quarter and the same period last year respectively. However, that's expected , due to the slow nature of the period which comes right after the holiday season. Consolidated net profit, on the other hand, is up at $214.3 million.

Handset shipments decreased by 22% quarter-over-quarter to 13.7 million unit and revenue from the division declined 10% compared to the previous quarter to $2.2 billion. Nevertheless, the division remained profitable, due to increased smartphone sales portion and the host of LTE-rocking phones it offers.

Nokia is apparently not all about the Amazing Everyday and still finds time for its 808 PureViewcameraphone monster. Today we got some fresh samples from the 41 megapixel to feast our eyes on. It's not the firsttime they're doing it, but you won't hear us complaining.

Nokia 808 PureView samples

Most of the photos have been downsized to 5 megapixels, which supposedly allows us to see the best of the PureView technology and they are really impressive.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

For a while there Europe was left out there, with South Korea and North America both having access to the LG Optimus LTE in some form, while the old continent couldn’t enjoy the 720p goodness of the 4.5" HD-IPS LCD display.

Now LG is ready to right the wrong as it announcedLG Optimus True HD LTE P936 in Germany. The phone runs on a Snapdragon chipset with dual-core 1.5GHz processor and packs an 8MP camera with 1080p video capture. It runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and comes with a 16GB microSD card. The Optimus True HD LTE also packs T-DMB connectivity.

But the network data connectivity is where it gets really interesting - the phone has both HSPA+ and LTE support. LTE coverage is pretty rare in Europe, but carriers around the continent are busy testing and expending their networks, so this shoud change soon.

There's no official launch date for the LG Optimus True HD LTE P936 mentioned, or anything on which carriers will get it.

Samsung I9070 Galaxy S Advance is finally available. The smartphone was announced back in January and it was scheduled for April release. Samsung managed to keep its promise – the phone is now in stock at various retailers across Europe.

Clove UK was the first to report it has the Galaxy S Advance in stock – it costs £323 there.

The Galaxy S Advance comes with a first-generation Super AMOLED WVGA screen, a 1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, Mali-400 MP graphics and 768MB RAM. There is a 5 megapixel camera with HD video recording and 8 or 16GB internal storage as well as optional NFC connectivity. The phone runs on Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread, but it will probably get ICS later this year.

Amazon DE offers the non-NFC version of the Galaxy S Advance for €365, but you could find it for €330 at other online retailers

Samsung has announced its next generation Exynos processor that will be powering its next Galaxy smartphone. The Exynos 4 Quad comes with four Cortex A9 cores that can go up to 1.4GHz individually and is based on Samsung's 32nm HKMG fabrication process.

The Exynos 4 Quad, also known as the Exynos 4212 (previously as the 4412), packs two times the number of cores as the Exynos 4 Dual (Exynos 4210) that you find in the Galaxy S II but due to the new 32nm processor is said to be 20 percent more efficient.

If you've been following our reviews, then you're undoubtedly familiar with the extensive array of tests we subject any device which finds itself under our critical gaze in the GSMArena Labs. Today, we're proud to announce the test results now have their own category at the bottom of the specifications page for each of the tested devices.

We hope that adding all the test results in one place will save you the time and effort to dig them through. Clicking on any of the results will take you to the relevant page in the respective review article, where you can get more information on the selected test.

Huawei may not be the first name that springs to mind when you think smartphones and tablets, but the Chinese are certainly one of the major players in both markets. At this year's MWC Huawei declared its intentions to storm the top of the Android food chain with its Ascend D1,D quad and D quad XL. The company also introduced the Media Pad 10 FHD, which is one of the most interesting upcoming droid tablets.

And it turns out, the Huawei ambitions aren't limited to the Android market. The latest rumor suggests that at least 70 people at Huawei are working on developing Windows Phone Apollo-based smartphones, which will become available by the end of 2012.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

So, the iPad is dead, long live the iPad. That's also part of the deal. The retirement of the first-generation of the Apple tablet is nothing out of the ordinary. There used to be the iPad and the iPad 2. Now, we have the iPad and the iPad 2 is the backup, the second choice.

Apple iPad 3rd gen official pictures

The new iPad. Here's one for you. You're Apple and you're about to launch your latest product. You want to dispel even the remotest suspicion of recycling old stuff. You want the slightest hint smothered of sequels and their questionable worth. What do you do?

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 dispels any doubt about the return of the stylus - the S Pen transforms the tablet into something that will appeal to artist and business types alike. It's a very different experience, one that other tablets cannot match. It's not just the level of precision no finger can provide, the bundled software really extends the functionality.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 official pictures

The tablet itself can be seen as a special edition of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 - the body is slimmer (8.9mm vs. 9.7mm), the chipset is more powerful (both in CPU and GPU terms) and the front-facing camera is much better.

HTC's preliminary report made it pretty clear that the last couple of quarters were pretty tough for the company. Now, their full report is out and it gives us some more details on how HTC performed in Q1 of 2012.

The company's revenue ($2.3 billion) dropped about 34% both quarter on quarter and year on year. HTC attributes that to the product transition cycle (the new HTC One series went on sale after Q1 ended).

LG has some good news for 3D buffs - the LG Optimus 3D Max, their second generation Android phone with glasses-free 3D screen is launching across Europe. There's some bad news too - the Optimus 3D Max won't be coming to the UK for now.

Anyway, the 3D Max brings updates over the original Optimus 3D in several key areas - the dual-core CPU is now clocked at 1.2GHz (it still uses a TI OMAP 4430 chipset though), it has 1GB of RAM (up from 512MB), it's 2mm thinner, 20g lighter and comes with NFC connectivity.

The Nokia Lumia 900 has so far been available only across the Atlantic on the AT&T's GSM network. The available color options there are only black and cyan with the cyan version being noticeably more popular.

Recently, we even saw some hints of white units hitting the stores, but so far magenta was only a thing of rumors. Well, no longer as it's officially listed on Nokia's own Facebook page.

The (so far) South Korea-only LG Optimus Vu debuted in traditional black, but starting next week it will be available in white too. Both the back and the bezel around the 5" XGA display will be white.

XGA resolution is 768 x 1024, making for a 4:3 aspect ratio - quite rare for a mobile screen of this size. Anyway, the 8.5mm slim phoneblet packs LTE connectivity and a dual-core 1.5GHz processor along with niceties such as an HDMI port and a T-DMB TV tuner.

The white LG Optimus Vu will be available for SK Telecom and according to the press release is aimed at the ladies and youngster out there. There's still no info on a worldwide release of the Vu.

The Lumia series, the hallmark Windows Phone devices by Nokia, so far were left out in the cold as regards the Wireless Hotspot functionality. Every other WP smartphone has been enjoying that since the update to Mango, but not the Lumias.

Previously, we've caught wind of rumors that the about-to-be released Nokia Lumia 610 finally has that feature.

Now user reports suggest that the Lumia 710 and 800 will also have that featured enabled once the new Tango (WP7.5 refresh) update becomes public. So far, only pre-release firmwares have been out and about via the NaviFirm application. Navifirm acquires the firmware files directly from Nokia support servers so those are the real deal.